


Come Be Real With Me

by boxxed



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam gets magic before he gets friends, Alternative Start, M/M, an exercise in dramatic irony, references to canon typical abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:39:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26843764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxxed/pseuds/boxxed
Summary: Some nights Adam spends a few hours in a place he calls his own, and on some of those nights, he's not alone.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I wrote most of this about a year ago and the other day finally decided to fill in the few little gaps I was meant to go back to. I'm a slow writer and it took me, like, an hour tops. Extrapolate about me from this what you will.

When Robert Parrish had stumbled in, he'd been too drunk for his legs to find their way to his bed, much less his fists to Adam’s person. He hadn’t taken any notice of him at all. Collapsed on the couch, arm and leg flung off the side, he began to snore in a way that indicated that he wouldn’t be waking until at least midday. That meant Adam’s mother wouldn’t bother him in the morning. That meant the night was _his_.

Freedom was calling, though not from outside the trailer. While his mother might leave him alone, she would still report him if she realised his absence. Besides, where would he go? To a store he didn’t have money for? In a car he didn’t own? With friends he didn’t have? _One day_ , one day, when he found somewhere, someone to go to, it would be on a night like this that he’d make his escape. One day. For now he'd settle for his late night getaway, a couple of stolen hours he could call his own.

Still, he crept - a habit of a lifetime - while gathering what he needed: a black ceramic bowl he’d found for twenty-five cents at a yard sale and kept under his bed, a plastic beaker of water from beside it, a safety pin, and his thoughts from the pillow that told him he should take the opportunity to sleep instead. But he didn’t have work on Sundays and homework could be done without the full compliance of his body, so he poured some of the water into the bowl and set it down on the mattress, careful not to spill it, in a patch of moonlight that gleamed through the dirty, narrow window. He held the point of the safety pin against his thumb and watched the reflection off the glittering water, and although the sky outside was still and the water steady, the shapes seemed to move, then disappear, and Adam Parrish was gone gone gone.

The first time Adam had scryed, he'd expected nothing of it. It was a whim, a science experiment, an uncharacteristic leap of faith. A few weeks beforehand, he had thumbed through a book on metaphysics that someone had abandoned on the library table, avoiding going home until at least closing. It had started with passages about deities that Adam was fairly sure didn’t exist and histories that were mostly fiction but he’d soldiered on anyway. Crystals and chants and herbal correspondences, all tools for asking for something out of your control. If he’d wanted to learn how to pray, he would have gone to church.

Chapter nine was titled _**Divining the Truth**_. It began like this:

 _Divination, despite claims to the contrary, is rarely a good method of reading the future. There is, in fact, no sure way of fortune telling as the future is always complicated and uncertain. This does not mean however that your cards have nothing to say, only that they’re better at telling what resides in the recesses of now, instead of tomorrow. The trick is to commune with_ yourself _._

And who did Adam have other than himself? He had never put much stock in the idea of supernatural intervention, he’d had that notion beaten out of him years ago. Self reliance was Adam’s greatest attribute. So he read the chapter, really read it, and reread it for clarification because it didn’t promise him love nor money, only truth.

He wanted to believe in it more than he actually could. So when he'd left the library and found three black ravens perched on his bike, he told himself _it’s a sign, it’s a sign_ , a mantra to drown out his cynicism before his father could beat out his little faith. Which he did, that night and the next. It had been summer break after all; how else would Robert deal with him being around all day? When there was no school to notice his absence?

Still, Adam searched for anything that could give him the more that he needed. The only issue was, he never found anything concrete. It was the shape of a woman, mouth gaping in a silent scream that drifted in the steam of his microwave meal and out just as quick, the curve of a beak in a barrel fire. He would kick a stone and it would skip erratically in the wrong direction. _Follow me_! it seemed to say but Adam wouldn't, don’t be ridiculous. He tried cartomancy with a deck of playing cards, able to see the patterns but unable to discern any meaning. He stood in the bathroom with the lights off, staring at his reflection in the mirror until his features distorted, but that was a phenomenon recorded in science. A trick of the mind.

Scrying was different, though. The first time was in the garage where he worked, after everyone else had gone home, in the tinted back window of an Aglionby students car, stood off to the side so he couldn’t see himself in it. All there was in the reflection was the tools hanging on the wall opposite. And then the tools became leaves and the wall became sky, then the tinted window disappeared and all that was left was leaves and sky and Adam. He looked down and the concrete was gone, replaced with grass and flowers and wooded debris. He kicked a stone and it skittered off in the right direction. He’d never been in this wood before, but his knew it wasn’t west Virginia; the dirt was wrong, it wasn’t Adam coloured.

Careful, he stepped around the clearing. It was so real. He could hear the breeze rustling in the trees above and creatures rustling in the shrubs below. The midday sun beamed down with the pleasantness of late afternoon and turned everything into a painting of green and gold. All around him were things living in a way that Adam had rarely experienced . And that fact brought him back to reality, or rather, to the realisation that this wasn’t reality, that he needed to get back. After all he was meant to be working. He needed to process. He didn’t know how to leave.

_He didn’t know how to leave._

“Shit.”

It was a lot like lucid dreaming except he _knew_ he was awake, that his body was back at the garage and that this wasn’t a creation of his own making; it was a place and his consciousness had simply come here, entirely alone. It was only the vessel it occupied that wasn’t real. Forcing himself awake wouldn't work; he wasn’t asleep.

In the end it had been a crash of thunder and the shaking of corrugated metal sheets that had brought him to. He needed something to anchor his mind and his body, hence: the safety pin. A prick of pain to remind him where he was. Squeeze a little tighter and he was back. A little bit of ingenuity that Adam was obscurely proud of.

While he still hadn’t worked out how to just pull himself out, he had over the past couple of months gotten better at not becoming entirely lost. For the most part, he could keep a part of himself in the trailer, or at least a part that could actually keep track of what was going on. Something told Adam that if he ever truly left his body, he wasn’t coming back. Now, he would be able to hear his fathers' thundering footsteps or his mothers' attempts at diffusion and he would be home and scrambling under covers before he was caught.

The dead weight on the couch meant that Adam did not have to be so careful tonight. He wouldn't have to count minutes or pause to listen. Even Adam wasn’t so unlucky that he had to worry, not under these circumstances. And so with his tools ready, he let himself disappear again like he had a dozen nights before. _Take me away._

It was like waking up. One moment he was cloaked in empty darkness, time moving at indeterminate pace, both sudden and everlasting, the next he would open his eyes and blink against the bright light that bathed him. The clearing made him feel the way he thought Aglionby would when he had first started attending. And while here he was still alone, he wasn’t lonely. Strange birdcalls and impossibly beautiful dragonflies made for much better company than any of the cliques of varyingly wealthy brats could be to a local, scholarship boy. They weren’t judging him for existing in their vicinity.

The problem was, thia time he wasn't alone. Across the wildflowers stood a figure, distinctly human and dressed all in black: a man -- no, a boy, his head shaved and his posture strangely familiar. Adam took a few steps closer and then a few more, the boy seemingly unaware of his presence despite no attempt being made at inconspicuousness. And when he was only a few metres away and slightly annoyed that he still had noticed him approaching, Adam cleared his throat.

“Jesus _fuck_ ,” said Ronan Lynch, leaping half a foot in the air and landing so they were face-to-face. Ronan fucking Lynch. It seemed to Adam that the universe was intent on not letting him have nice things. Ronan looked him up and down, a deep scowl familiar to all those who knew him worrying at his forehead. Eventually, he shook off the expression and laughed, it seemed, to himself like Adam had told a particularly funny joke. One he claimed himself down, he kept staring at him, waiting, like if he looked long enough Adam would perform some kind of trick. Juggling, perhaps. 

“Do you know what this place is?” Adam asked eventually, desperate for at least one of them to say something. Ronan looked less surprised at the question than he had at Adam’s presence. He shrugged.

“Shit,” he said, peering around the clearing like he hadn’t previously realised it was there. “A dream, I guess.”

Adam supposed that made sense, in a way. The forest certainly was dreamlike; he’d thought as much the first time he'd come here.

Ronan spoke again. “And what are you?”

Adam thought he’d misheard. “Adam,” he said.

“I know _that_ , Parrish. But _what_ are you?”

Adam thought for a moment; it was hard to say. It wasn’t like he was a physical being; his body existed God knows how many miles or light years away. And besides if this were a dream, then maybe it was a rhetorical question. Something he had to work out for himself. What he couldn’t work out was why his subconscious would take the form of Ronan Lynch.

_What are you, Adam Parrish?_

“I don't know,” he said, finally. It was true enough and he doubted there was any answer that would mean much to dream Ronan. Or real Ronan, for the matter.

Ronan shrugged again, uninterested or unconcerned. He turned towards the trees and began to walk away. Just as he was disappearing among the forest, he retreated out of the darkness and looked back at Adam. “Are you just gonna stand there like a dork or...?”

Of course Adam followed.

The forest looked different than when he was on his own. Both more and less real. more because everything appeared in hyperfocus, and less because the clarity make it obvious how very strange the place was. Adam couldn’t tell if the foliage was parting as they walked or whether they simply found a miraculously straight, clear path through the trees. Ronan, if he noticed anything amiss, didn’t say. Adam supposed that if this were a kind of dream, then Ronan was too and as such lived by the peculiar rules of this world. He felt the scientific part of his mind itch to ask questions but couldn't quite bring himself to break the companionable silence that had befallen them.

Adam was struck that he’d never really ventured far beyond his clearing. That for all his longing for freedom, he’d never left the sanctity of what he knew. Wasted time. Further in the woods, the sky turned starry in a way that was normally reserved for long-exposed photographs, more breath-taking than anything a real human saw with the naked eye. Despite the inky blackness above, the way forward remained perfectly visible, although the trees were now the infinite colours of dust clouds and fireflies darted between them like tiny meteors.

Soon, Adam got a feeling. “I can't go much further" he said. Ronan didn't question him and nodded.

“This way.”

They backtracked a little, not far enough for it to become day again, before turning off in another direction. The trees thinned and just as Adam was about to ask where they were going, they stepped into another clearing. He hadn’t noticed the sound of rushing water before he saw the waterfall and when he did, he thought it should have been louder. The pool below was just a pool; no river or stream to take away what went in and apart from the crash site, the surface was perfectly still.

Adam stopped. Not sure what to do. Wanting to say something but unable to find the words. Ronan gave him the same look he had in the previous clearing. _What are you just standing there for?_ It said. But instead of making a move, he gazed back. Then Ronan did the same. They stood there for a long moment and Adam found himself wondering if the real Ronan Lynch looked like this under the moonlight. If his features were ever soft and if his lips ever parted for anything other than spitting venom.

He looked away, shamed. Only a moment of eye contact and he was already half-fantasising about a boy best known for the contempt of everything around him. Everything, no doubt, including Adam.

He looked up in time to see dream Ronan climb into the water, shoes and all. He submerged himself completely before leaping up, rocketing through the surface and destroying the tranquillity. He shook his head and shoulders like a wet dog and Adam found himself laughing as Ronan grinned at him.

“Come on,” he called, “there’s probably nothing in here that’ll bite your dick, or whatever.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “ _Probably_ isn’t especially cconvincing. Like, out here I know my dick isnt gonna get eaten and I'm sure it wouldn't make much difference in your case, but I'd quite like it to stay that way."

“Don't be a bitch. Are you getting in, or what? I can leave if you're just gonna stand there and suck.”

Part of Adam didn't want to on the grounds that he was being goaded into it, a compulsion of wanting to exert his own will on this dream place instead of it on him. But another part, the grander one, the one that longed to be wild and reckless, even if only for something as menial as to leap into a dream lake, was desperate to. So, without another thought, he ran and he jumped and for one inexplicable moment, he felt entirely free.

Hitting the water was a shock of cold and when Adam broke the surface, he swore at Ronan for not warning him.

“I didn’t realise you were that precious, Parrish,” he said, laughing. It was strange, Adam thought, that even when laughing at his misfortune, this dream Ronan didn't sound cruel, far from it. What had transposed him here and made him joyful? Surely not Adam. Nonetheless, he wondered if Ronan would still exist when he went home. After all, what’s a dream without a dreamer?

“This feels very real,” said Adam as he ran his hands over the ripples he made as he exhaled.

“It is,” said Ronan, watching, “in a way.”

“Will you be here again? When I come back?”

Ronan shrugged. “Could say the same to you.”

“Yes. Sometimes.”

“Me too. Sometimes.”

Adam felt the water around him move and just as he registered the weight on his shoulders he was under. Water filled his mouth as bubbles obscured his vision and he flailed his arms, hitting Ronan in the chest. He resurfaced, spluttering, not choking, you probably couldn’t drown here even if you wanted to.

“You _asshole_ ,” said Adam and spat the last of the water in Ronan's face. This didn’t deter him, he laughed harder and when Adam slashed at him, even harder and when Adam pushed him backward, he threw himself down and let him be drowned. When he returned, he was still smiling so Adam splashed him again. Adam felt for the first time that he knew what the word _abandon_ truly meant. Yes, of course he was going to come back. Tomorrow, if he could. And the day after that and the day after that. It wasn’t something he could afford to promise himself, but quietly, he did anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll upload the other 2 chapters as I can be bothered to format them; shouldn't be long ✌


	2. Chapter 2

At first, Adam had thought they had found some sort of river or stream. Magical, of course, because this was a dream forest and also because Ronan was walking on it. Well, perhaps that would just mean that Ronan himself was magical, which Adam was fairly certain he was. Once he got closer however, he found that it wasn’t even wet; it was a path made of millions of pebbles, half the size of a palm, stretching in both directions too far for the ends to be seen beyond the obfuscating trees and Adam wondered how, even under the moonlight , he had mistaken them for anything else.

“Where does it go, do you reckon?” asked Adam, bending down for a better look. He ran his fingers over smooth rock but resisted the urge to pick one up, unsure if the faint glow was something he should be wary of.

“Fuck if I know,” said Ronan, who would had no care if he were standing in the middle of a minefield, “you’re the genius. Probably fairies or some shit.”

“Fairies?”

“Yeah, you know, fairies. Tricksy little fuckers. Look nice and all but they’ll eat your tongue for breakfast if you’re not careful.” That didn’t sound right to Adam, but he'd never been read fairy stories growing up, so he didn’t have enough information to refute.

“Want to find out?”

Ronan shrugged, which meant _yes, but I’m too cool to admit it_ , and began to march at such a pace that Adam had to half jog to keep up. When he did, he tugged on Ronan's arm. “Slow down,” he said, “you’re killing me.”

He heeded Adams request and slowed to a comfortable stroll. It meant that Adam could pay closer attention to the ground beneath them; the way the stones shone a little brighter wherever the boys had trodden and slowly changed shades of blue and purple, so subtle that Adam was sure he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn't been watching. When he accidentally kicked one and sent it flying further along the road, the impact of stone on stone was a flash of multi coloured stars ricocheting off in every direction. He stopped to kick another and then another and then Ronan joined and they were making fireworks. Or were they waves? Or apparitions? It was hard to say. But no matter how many stones they displaced, there was always more underfoot and the path stayed pristine.

“Were gonna wake those fairies,” said Ronan, probably bored, and for the life of him, Adam couldn't tell if he was actually being serious. Either way, it was a clear indication to move on.  
Except there lay the problem. As they walked side by side, shoulders bumping periodically, more and more regularly until they were moving in perfect tandem, some part of them always touching the other, neither making to step away, Adam began to feel the pull. It told him, as it always did, that he was going too far. He wanted to push. To explore the road until morning and see the way the sunrise would transform it into something entirely new. But something told him, as it always did, that if he snapped the cord that tethered him to the grove or to his body, that he would never get back.

That might not have been so bad, and it wouldn’t be, if it only meant staying this enchanted place forever with the prince in his kingdom. It wouldn’t be, if Adam could make any kind of guarantee. He couldn’t. He’d read every piece of literature he could get his hands on about scrying, astral projection, time travel, anything he could think of to try and find an explanation for how he had managed to get where he had and what might happen if he took it any further. If anyone knew, they hadn’t written it down anywhere that Adam could find. And as a man of science, he wasn’t going to experiment without proper safety precautions.

He stopped. The loss of contact when Ronan didn’t was like ripping a band aid; instant, sharp and whatever it meant, Ronan noticed and turned back to him, frowning.

“This is it for me,” said Adam.

Ronan’s frown deepened.

“I cant go any further" he clarified. “You can keep on going if you want to keep looking. Find the fairies. I won't mind.” He did mind but that wasn’t something he was about to say. Telling Ronan goodbye at the end of the night had become increasingly distressing and the longing to be with him again once awake, increasingly pressing. But to have the precious hours on occasional nights cut prematurely? Devastating. Adam wouldn't beg him to stay. Even in a dream, he had more pride than that.

“Nah,” said Ronan and Adam prayed that he couldn't see the way his entire body relaxed in response. To Adam's own credit, he held himself together, entertaining the fancy that Ronan, dream or not, wanted to be with him as much as the other away around. “If I’m going to fuck around with fairies, I’m gonna do it with a sacrifice for when things get hairy.”

“So you _do_ just want me for my body,” said Adam, immediately regretting it. He felt he cheeks heat but Ronan, already heading back the way they came, laughed and suddenly everything would be alright. Adam joined in and half jogged to catch up, praying his erratically beating heart wasn’t about to kill him through the sheer force of it.

As they walked side by side, their shoulders knocked accidentally, then deliberately and Adam stared resolutely ahead when Ronan turned to look at him and tried not to laugh when he did it again. Ronan quickly caught the game though, and shoved back a little harder also feigning innocence. And so it went, every couple of minutes, a little push, arm to arm, back and forth until they tittered on violence.

“You’re never gonna win Parrish. I’d give it up if I were you.”

Of course Ronan wouldn’t know that Adam Parrish had never given up on anything in his entire life so he was too surprised when Adam practically toppled him off the path and pelted full speed onward leaving a trail of flashing lights in his wake. Ronan didn't catch up by the time he’d reached the woven twig and vine archway that had originally enticed them. He darted through it and did his best not to stumble on any roots or debris until the edge of his glen and victory was in sight.

He burst though the trees edge and was about to declare himself champion Ronan ran straight into him, wrapping his arms around Adam’s waist and tackling with alarming speed. Adam let out a shout but let it happen, revelling in the sensation of being held.

They went down together and there, amongst the grass, wildflowers bloomed around them and they began to laugh.

***

4am. He came home to the sounds of his fathers' fury. Hushed not for Adam’s benefit but so the neighbours wouldn't hear and call the cops. Robert never hit his wife, he wasn’t that kind of man, not quite, but that didn't stop Adam waiting up and making sure. And once all had gone quiet and he could hear his father’s soft snores through the cardboard walls, he tidied away his scrying tools and cried himself to sleep.

***

“We should stay here today,” said Ronan in lieu of a greeting.

“Okay? Can I ask why?” Adam didn’t know why he was questioning it, he hadn’t wanted to go anywhere, anyway. A test in the morning meant a half decent nights sleep was mandatory, but his mother was in bed and his father was out of town for the night, thus an opportunity too ample to waste presented itself.

“Because I fucking want to,” said Ronan, predictably, “now lie down, Parrish, there’s a cloud that looks like Abraham Lincoln.”

There was, in fact, a cloud that looked startling like Abraham Lincoln if he had been forty pounds heavier. And while Adam marvelled at it, he relished the grass, soft like it was freshly mown in a country where it never turned brown; the exact opposite of the scruff that habited outside the Parrish double-wide, a straw like patch that itched if sat on that had nothing to do with ticks. The dream place was, after all, everything you wanted from the great outdoors but never got, the idealisation of nature. You could lay there for hours, sleep even, and you'd never ache or get cold. You would never wake up to find spiders had taken residence in your hair, only dew drops and beautiful boys by your side.

Maybe if he closed his eyes and pretended, he would emerge from his scrying refreshed, then he could stay all night. With the forest. With Ronan. It would be worth trying one day, on a night Ronan didn’t manifest to show him ever more wonders. Though this moment, right here, was it’s own wonder Adam supposed. Tranquillity was not something Adam had much experience with. He realised suddenly, that he'd been so wrapped up in feeling safe and adventurous, not wanting to waste any moment amongst the magic, he had never taken the opportunity to simply _breath_. And so that’s what he did.

He inhaled every ounce of air his lungs could manage without bursting and released it slowly, deliberately, revelling in the sensation. He could see it as if there were a winter chill until it dissipated. Breath in. Breath out.

Ronan was watching him, his swirling breath. In his periphery, Adam noticed and stilled, the small clouds barely there. He took one more moment to himself, briefly closing his eyes, before turning his head to face him, grass tickling the side of his face.

He thought in that moment, that if this were a romantic movie, the kind his mother liked to sometimes watch when she knew Robert wouldn’t be home until the early hours, Ronan’s hair would fall across his face, obscuring his pale, blue eyes and Adam would gently move the stands away with his fingertips and let them linger on his temple. Of course, Ronan always sported his shaved head and not for the first time, Adam wished he too were a dream thing so he could change it. Instead, he settled for reaching out and running his forefinger from the back of his jaw to the front. He let it linger. He could not say who moved next.

  
Adam had kissed and been kissed before and this kiss was much like any other. Lips moved together and parted and soft breaths dispersed between them. Ronan’s touch did not feel so physically different from anyone else's, though his grip was stronger and his hands were bigger than anyone Adam had ever been with. The was no particular skill or technique on display that should make this extraordinary. This shouldn’t have made Adam burn any more than he had before.

But God. They were on fire. Every meeting of skin on skin threw sparks and mouths pressed hard enough that teeth almost clashed. And then the inferno subsided and left soft, pleasant embers on their tongues and wherever they touched. Ronan’s skin was so very real.

It felt more than it was. More than a kiss. For a moment Adam had thought that he'd been stripped bare and ravaged on the silky grass and simply missed the entire thing. But Ronan was there, lying beside him, all his posturing absent, gazing at him with what looked like wonder.

 _That’s my job_ , Adam thought. It was the most dreamlike thing that had ever happened.   
Adam desperately wanted to say something. He let it sit on his tongue, melt and then he swallowed it and would not move until it reached his hollow stomach.

“I have to go,” he said, making no attempt to leave. He arms were still wrapped around Ronan’s neck and he trailed the stubs of his nails along the back of skull. He did need to go. If he stayed, he was going to do something stupid an reckless and possibly highly unethical. He couldn’t get tangled in this. He already was. He shouldn’t. He was. He needed to leave.

“Sure,” said dream Ronan, feather soft. “You’ll come back?”

“Always,” said Adam. He should have been lying.

***

It had been weeks and weeks since the thought of seeing dream Ronan had wrecked Adam's nerves so thoroughly. Yet, there he was, scrying bowl on the floor waiting for Adam to input, making no attempt to go anywhere.

It was hard to say what part made him so reluctant. He was a practical human at his core, he recognised that when his heart beat a little faster in Ronan's presence, it wasn’t exertion. He had known for weeks. It seemed silly that a simple kiss would do it; the natural follow-up to that time together. And really, deep down, he had always known it was a doomed pursuit. Known it every time he sat behind the real Ronan Lynch in Latin or seen him across the dining hall with a pile of assorted goods that amounted to more than what Adam would eat the entire day. None of it was new.

Hell, it was just as likely that dream Ronan wouldn't even be there, anyway. And if he was? Why should there be any difference? It was a dream. Dreaming things that made you happy was generally regarded as a good thing. The problem was, Adam could admit, was that it was making him too happy. It made the real world dark and desperate in comparison. Adam's world had always been that, although it was harder to ignore when he had something to compare it to, much like being poor was harder to ignore when you had a boarding school of trust fund babies on your doorstep.

The water waited for him, unnaturally still, calling. What else could he do but plunge?

In the glen, there was Ronan. He looked different; softer, somehow. It took Adam a moment to realise that is wasn't him that changed but everything around him. The difference wasn't drastic, he hadn't even noticed it at first, but it was there. The normally glorious sunshine had been dialled forward into what looked like early sunset and there were more flowers than there ever had been before. Ronan sat amongst them, legs crossed, studiously hunched over what appeared to be a flower crown that he kept adjusting. He reached out and grabbed a white, glowing butterfly and nestled it between the blooms then repeated the process a few more times.

The butterflies were new too, the physical ones anyway, and some of them fluttered around Adam's head, weaving in and out of his vision like ghosts. He caught one with ease, by design he assumed and cupped it lightly, though he was sure it couldn't really get hurt.

If Ronan noticed his approach, he made no indication. Adam sat beside him and transferred his captive to join the others. Apparently satisfied by his contribution, Ronan placed his creation atop of Adam's head without a word and smiled slightly, though he didn't meet his eyes.

Adam felt his resolve crumbling. A slap-dash building made of poor-quality concrete, residents evacuated and a hefty fine for someone somewhere in the middle of the chain of command. He was picking pieces of rubble off the street and throwing them back through the empty windows as if it might stop the thing falling entirely.

If dream Ronan kissed him again, he wouldn't do a damn thing to stop it. He wouldn't start it. But he wouldn't stop it.

"Wanna go walk?" Asked dream Ronan.

"I'm not a dog," said Adam but Ronan only rolled his eyes and they both got up.

Dream Ronan wasn't the talkative type. Adam wouldn't call him quiet; his presence alone was louder than most shouts, but he reserved his words for intimacy or crude remarks. They often walked in silence, taking in the wonders around them and of the occasional brush of skin-on-skin.

Today, though, the songbirds sang louder than Adam could ever remember them being. Ronan hummed a tune Adam didn't recognise while a chorus harmonized in the trees. A feeling in his chest surged painfully, his throat tightened and the sudden urge to scream was so forceful, he almost gave in to it.

 _I can't do this_ , he thought. _I won't do this._

"Actually, I need to go." He didn't look at Ronan as he said it or when he got no response for a few agonising moments. Dream Ronan poked him in the arm.

"Okay," he said, eventually, voice as quiet as Adam had ever heard it. He still didn't look. He turned and walked. And as soon as he was able, he woke up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I had more ideas for this fic bc there were lines in this chap that suggested as such but for the life if me I dont remember what they were so I had to delete them like naughty children. goodbye naughty children


	3. Chapter 3

Dream Ronan didn't mention kissing again and nor did he do any kissing. He also didn't mention the time Adam had decided to go AWOL after five minutes together that one time. It was for the best, Adam supposed. Disappointing though it was, he had to admit that getting romantically attached was neither healthy nor practical. Kissing the real Ronan was probably not healthy either and possibly even less practical on the grounds that they never, well, spoke. They had never actually interacted on any level beyond ‘“do you have a pen, Parrish?” “Not for you, Lynch.”’ and that was no basis to ask someone out, least of all for someone like Ronan Lynch who could conceivably have anyone he wanted and more likely than not had no interest in boys anyway.

The problem was, however, that Adam’s primary method of ridding his intruding, whimsical thoughts of dream Ronan, was to replace him with real Ronan and it was beginning to reflect in his Latin classwork.

Generally speaking, Ronan was pretty easy to ignore class. He was a vagrant, hanging out at the back, not partaking: quiet, eyes closed, feet on the desk, a misdemeanour that teachers from across the school had tried and failed to stop him from doing. Adam could pretend, for the most part, that he simply wasn’t there. In Latin, however, Ronan suddenly became a model student.

Not model perhaps; he still made the show of rather being anywhere else in the world. Still, he paid attention and answered questions, bored but correct, always, and handed in homework both regularly and on time. From his usual residence at dead bottom of the class, he had dethroned Adam’s usual spot at the top, a fact that both frustrated and intrigued him. Frustrated because, objectively, Latin was one of the hardest classes they shared, and if he was capable of getting continually better grades than anyone then surely he was perfectly able to do so elsewhere in the curriculum. And intrigued... maybe he was coming to find all parts of Ronan intriguing. Maybe he'd fantasised about late night revision sessions where he’s lightly scolded on his incorrect verb tenses. Maybe.

Also, unlike their other classes, Ronan sat directly in front of him, supplying an unobstructed view of his hunched back, the black tendrils of the tattoo that snaked out of his collar, begging for the rest to be seen. Sometimes, when Ronan leaned to talk to Gansey, he turned his head enough that Adam caught a half view of his profile and it held him the same way it did in the dream. The strong nose, the sharp, high cheekbones and jawline to match. The eyes that Adam had seen on more than once stare a man into submission but had elsewhere held such tenderness that just remembering it made Adam want to cry. Twice, Ronan had glanced behind him to catch Adam flick his own eyes back to his barely started work, almost like he’d known.

One time he’d glanced back and wildly, recklessly, Adam hadn’t backed down. He’d let Ronan meet his eyes, smirk, brows raised and lips thin and turn to whisper something in Gansey’s ear.  
 _Ronan Lynch knows I have a crush and now Richard Campbell Gansey the third knows I have crush and soon likely everyone’s going to know and that’s going to be the end of my life at Aglionby_ , he’d thought. Which was silly, really, because even in a world where every single privileged, rich bastard made it their sole purpose in life to make Adam's life miserable, he wouldn’t quit. As it was, whatever Ronan had said never made it’s way back to him, if it were about him at all. How conceited, arrogant, he thought, to presume Ronan Lynch, rebel prince of Aglionby would ever have a thought to spare for a lowly peasant that wondered his halls unless to ask it for a spare writing utensil.

So Latin became a class of daydreams and indulgence and indulgent daydreams that left him with even more work to catch up on the snatched moments of freedom over the weekend; the time he could be using to go back into the dream space. It was for the best the same way not getting kissed was for the best. To stay in reality, to not get lost in the dream. At least even if real Ronan never took his hand of kissed him in a glen or breathed his name into his ear like it was the last thing he'd ever say, then he wasn’t chasing a ghost, something he couldn’t move on from because it was always there to escape to. At least it was _real_. Ronan Lynch was real, real, real.

_Remember that_ , Adam. _He’s not your thing to play with._

He stopped letting himself go into the dream space after a while. He stored his cup back into the cupboard where it belonged and threw away his safety pin. His scrying bowl he hid in the darkest recesses under his bed. Some nights he missed dream Ronan the most and some nights the forest. And some nights the thought of either was so paralyzingly painful that he forgot how to breath.

***

Latin became more and less and less and more. As thoughts of dream Ronan began to settle as memories, the two iterations became less overlapped and confused in Adam’s mind. He no longer stared at the growing fuzz of hair on the back of Ronan's neck while his head screamed _I’ve kissed you, I’ve kissed you, I’ve kissed you_. He hadn’t. He wanted to. It was a normal want. For a beautiful boy to kiss you. On your mouth, cheek, neck, shoulder, chest. He didn’t forget, though. Sometimes when he closed his eyes, he was back in the glen, waiting.

“Parrish, you got a pen?” It was the only conversation they'd ever truly had, though they'd had it a few times. Some part of Adam’s neurology wouldn’t let him respond this time, not even to make the snide remark he usually managed. “Pencil? Chalk? Stone tablet and fucking chisel?”

He managed.

“Sure, do you need a hammer, too? Or do you already have one in your murder kit?”

“Whatever, man,” said Ronan. He turned to a snickering Gansey, “and you can shut up, too unless you’ve suddenly got something for me.”

“Okay, Jesus, hold on,” said Adam before he plunged into the depths of satchel. “Here, I want it back.” An invitation.

Ronan gave him a two fingered salute and smile so sharp it could cut diamonds. There was something softer behind his eyes, though, something that betrayed his tough boy persona. A look so contrived it shouldn't have made Adam’s heart race the way it did, but it did.

At the end of class, he didn’t get his pen back. Ronan had upped and left before Whelk had finished dismissing them. He supposed he hadn't actually specified that he had wanted it back at the end of the lesson but as they had no more classes together that day, he felt like the implication should have been obvious. He wasn’t getting it back. Soon, he’d have to raid his cereal come money box for spare change to purchase some more. This was why he didnt lend out his pens, not even to someone he’d spent more nights than not fantasizing about.

He got up with even less enthusiasm than he felt, mentally preparing himself for ninety minutes of study in the library while pretending he wasn’t hungry. Before he left, an abandoned Gansey turned to him and promised to get his pen back in a manner that suggested he was sincere, the same way a politician promised you a better life if only you’d _vote for me_. Adam waved him off as if it didn’t matter, internally praying that he'd follow through.

About half way to the library, he registered something weighted on his shoulder. It shoved him sideways, not rough, but with enough force that it left no room for argument and shoved him in through a door off to his left.

The room he was cajoled into was windowless and too small to be used as a regular classroom. Instead it usually functioned as a space for club meetings or small group study. One of three long out-of-date Mac screens at the back was turned on providing the only illumination, just enough for Adam to recognise Ronan's distinctive silhouette looming in front of him. It was a good job that is was too dark to see faces with any sort of clarity; the sudden closeness of them made Adam’s head spin and there was every possibility that he looked plain stupid. There was also every chance that he’d _do_ something stupid and the dark wasn'tas apt at hiding those sins .

“Why do you keep watching me?” was the first thing Ronan said. Adam, startled, didn’t respond.

Once Ronan had waited long enough to realise he wasn’t getting one, he tried again. “I said: why--"

“I know what you said,” Adam snapped. “I’m not watching you.” It was the sort of bold faced lie he normally reserved for his father, when the truth was a guaranteed welcome of his wrath, though it never made much of a difference with him.

“Fuck off, I’ve _seen_ you.” He didn't sound angry. Not really. Annoyed, perhaps. Confused. Imploring.

“How could you know? Unless you’ve also been watching me back.”

“Because every time I turn around to- Jesus shit, Parrish, no one likes a smartass.”

“And yet you’ve kidnapped me. Alone. In a dark classroom, that gets used maybe three times a week and never during regular school hours. Just so you can interrogate me because you think _I’ve been watching you._ And even if I was, why would you care?” _After all, I’m nothing to you._

Ronan threw his hands up in either frustration, disbelief or defeat and let them fall with a resounding slap against his thighs. “Fuck, you’re right; I don't.”

Adam hadn’t realised how much heat Ronan’s body gave off until it was gone. He didn’t leave the room. He stood by the door, hand gripping the knob, posture as tight as a cat ready to pounce. The only sound for a long moment was the wiring fan of a computer left running too long, the static of a screen crackling in the distance. Two sets of breath trying desperately to stay steady. Ronan removed his hand and immediately put his fist to the wall beside, not hard enough to do damage to either, but enough for the impact to made sound. He fumbled against the wall, finally finding the light switch a flipping it on. The shock of fluorescence blinded Adam momentarily and he squinted until eventually his eyes began to adjust.

Once he regained the gift of sight, he looked over to Ronan on the floor, rummaging through his the front pocket of his rucksack, pulling out receipts, wrappers, keys, an EpiPen and what looked like Joseph Kavinsky's sunglasses. When he found what he was apparently looking for, he obscured it in his fingers and came back to Adam, hiding it from view.

“I don't do drugs if that’s what you’re about to offer me.”

“Lucky for you, Parrish, I don't either.” Ronan opened his raised fist. There, in his palm, was a stone. Adam recognised it immediately.

“I don’t understand,” he said. It was one of the stones from the fairy path, just it had been in the dream space. Perfectly smooth and rounded and glittering like water under a clear, blue sky. It looked decidedly less real, less possible in a world of desks and chalkboards.

“ _You_ don't understand?” said Ronan, understanding Adam perfectly. “You’re the one showing up in _my_ dreams.”

“In your _dreams_?”

Ronan didn't say anything else. He looked raw, less the angry boy who existed within Aglionby and more the boy Adam had half suspected he was falling in love with. And he was real.

Real. The truth of it hit harder than the impossible thing in his hand brought to life.

“And what about that,” Adam asked.

“Took it,” said Ronan. He didn’t look away from Adam’s face. Adam ran his hands through his hair. He just took it, like he’d found it on the sidewalk, a dropped penny. Like it was nothing.

“How is that even possible?”

Ronan shrugged, as if it were of little concern to him. Probably it wasn’t. If you could take treasures out of your dreams, why would it matter to you the logistics? Someone like Ronan probably didn’t feel the need to question the why or how. It was just a part of being extraordinary. A day in the life of Ronan Lynch.

Adam leant back against the wall and dropped his bag to the floor, exhausted, overwhelmed. He wanted to close his eyes but was afraid that if he did, Ronan and his magic would disappear and leave Adam stranded once more.

“So how do you do it?” Asked Ronan eventually.

“Do what?”

He gave him a withering look.

“Scrying,” admitted Adam. It seemed a pale kind of magic in comparison.

Ronan gave a loud _ha_! As if sensing his thoughts. He said, “no way. No way you use that Pagan, New Age, hippy bullshit to get into my dreams.”

“It's true,” said Adam, suddenly defensive.

“Bull. Shit.”

“Its true. If you were gonna be a dick about it, why'd you ask?”

Ronan laughed in faint disbelief and ran a hand over his skull. It was ridiculous. It was all so ridiculous. They looked at each other for what seemed like a long time. Adam could hear a gaggle of boys whooping and cheering on the other side of the door (had they won something? Was it the lacrosse finals this week?) that eventually receded down the hallway.

“What’s your hair like?”

“What?”

Adam was vaguely distressed to have asked. A lie. He was mortified. But he’d needed to say something and it was the first thing that sprung to mind whose answer probably wouldn’t send him spiralling. “Your hair,” he continued, willing his face to stay a neutral colour, “in the dream space, I always thought if I could manipulate things like you could, I’d see what you looked like with hair. Obviously, you’re real so it probably wouldn't have worked anyway, but still.”

Ronan blinked slowly, looking at him like he'd lost his mind. He might not have been wrong.

“Fuck, Parrish, I tell you I can pull shit out of my head and all you care about... is my hair? You have some fucked up priorities.”

“No, I just- oh, shut up. I care about the dreams and the taking but I need, like a bit- Jesus, we’re at _school_ , I can’t do this here. I need to process. Properly. Preferably after econ.”

“Right.”

“I’m not gonna freak out.”

“You’re freaking out now.”

“I am not. I putting it on a backburner. I’m not gonna freak out.”

Ronan rolled his eyes. “Alright, whatever.”

“Ronan.” His name felt too familiar on Adam’s tongue. It came too naturally, like he'd said it a million different times in a million different ways. He wondered if Ronan said Adam it would resonate the same.

“Okay, you’ve seen my brother? Declan?” of course Adam knew of Ronan's older brother, and his younger, for the matter. Everyone knew the Lynches, even if only so you know who not to mess with. The two eldest had a reputation for being unbeaten in a fist fight and the youngest had two older brothers. He thought of Declan's carefully styled dark curls and nodded.

“Like his but I wore it longer and never used a brush.”

“How long.”

Ronan gestured around his jaw.

“Damn, I bet you the prettiest little kid. I bet moms saw you and swooned.”

“Only the first time they met me.”

“God. And I bet you were a complete brat. Like, just the worst.”

“Oh, you have _no_ idea.”

They dissolved into easy laughter and then into easy silence. It wasn’t searching, desperate like it had been. It was their silence; when they were traipsing through the woods or floating beneath a waterfall or waiting for the stars to fall. It was space that didn’t need to be filled with words because it would be better filled with touch if it needed to be filled at all. Adam wouldn’t, though. The rules were different here; he couldn’t just take what he wanted. But, _oh_ , he wanted.

_It was you. It was all really you._

His lips ached.

Ronan sighed. “Look,” he said, “I cant believe I’m gonna say this but if he asks, you need to pretend like it’s all new information.” He sighed again, waiting for the protest. Adam had no idea what he was supposed to protesting. “What do you know about dead, Welsh kings?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading 💖


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